Expert on Russian Politics, Pussy Riot Speaks in Southampton Wednesday
The Stony Brook Southampton MFA in Creative Writing and Literature program is welcoming New York Times columnist and author Masha Gessen on Wednesday for the next session in the Writers Speak series.
Gessen will read from her new book, Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot, and then sit for an interview by former New Yorker fiction editor Dan Menaker.
Gessen is also the author of the 2012 political biography The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. For the March 11, 2014 edition of The Los Angeles Times, she wrote an op-ed piece headlined “Is Vladimir Putin crazy? Hardly,” in which she said Putin is akin to a playground bully.
Before the Sochi Olympics, Gessen co-edited with LGBT advocate Joseph Huff-Hannon Gay Propaganda, in response to the Putin government’s passing of a law banning “homosexual propaganda.”
Writers Speak Wednesdays are always free and open to the public. Masha Gessen speaks April 2 at 7 p.m. in the Radio Lounge on the second floor of Chancellors Hall at the Stony Brook Southampton campus in Shinnecock Hills.
Upcoming speakers are Mark Epstein, M.D., on April 9; and Dinah Lenney on April 30.
Watch Gessen speaking about Putin on The Daily Show in 2012: